Motivation

Motivation is having the eagerness to do what one is supposed to do, willingly and without needing to be told or forced to do. Motivation can only work if it comes from within you, that is you must be self-motivated. If you are motivated by external factors, it either does not work or work temporarily and that is external motivation.

Understand what motivates you and you can use it to accomplish what you want in life. Your motivation is the source of your energy that keeps you going through the day. Some days you are filled with motivation while other days you are lacking in it. You also experience different levels of motivation on different days and at different places. For example, your motivation on Friday is higher than on Monday. This is understandable as Friday is the eve of weekend. Your motivation level while you are in the office differs from that while you are at home.

This accounts for the variability of human behaviour and their effectiveness at different times and locations. But being consistently motivated is the key to personal productivity. You need motivation for personal confidence and performance, more so at work. The greater the feeling of motivation the harder it propels you to the attainment of your goals. As you meet each deadline and overcome each obstacle, your motivation increases and that in turn increases your confidence and better your performance. Employer’s recognition of your efficiency and competence raises your motivation further.

You must act on your motivation otherwise it is just motivation without any action. Motivation itself does not guarantee complete fulfilment of your dreams. You must believe in your ability to do something, anything – anything that has been done by someone else, so can you. In other words, you must change your mindset which hitherto has been associated with the mistaken belief that you are incapable of succeeding in doing anything or some of the things. Replace it with a positive belief. Your new and strong belief coupled with self-motivation will bring the desired change in your life.

When building self-motivation, a number of factors must be taken into account. You have got to believe in yourself. When you are lacking in self-confidence and self-belief, it is very improbable that you possess self-motivation, without which you are not likely to succeed. Drain your mind of all negative thoughts and fill it with positive ones, and thence ensure you allow only positive thoughts to enter your mind.

When confronted with difficulties or failures, refuse to recognize them as such. Instead, accept them as challenges. Whenever fear crops up, banish it from your mind by taking appropriate action to deal with it. Procrastination serves to heighten your fear, so don’t wait but act immediately. Most importantly, think of the rewards, the recognition and compliments that await your success.

You must ensure that you are in control of your own motivation. If you take the responsibility of creating your own motivation, you decide to have control over influences of your daily life that affect everything you do and thus what motivates you and what does not. This self-generated motivation can only spring from the inside of you and does not rely on outside help. Most importantly, you do not want to be motivated by external events that are beyond your control. You choose to have lasting motivation, and not temporary external motivation.

What better way to increase your motivation than to weigh the potential benefits that you are likely to derive from an accomplishment, and the loss that you can possibly incur in not accomplishing. List down the benefits and let the list be a great motivator. It boosts your courage to begin and gives you the willingness to risk failures and overcome obstacles along the way to successful completion.

People are not motivated to change if they are unsure of the end results. They have doubts as to how the change is going to affect them whether adversely or favourably. Lack of information often leads to mostly negative speculations. Their instinct for self-preservation would generally be to think of a worse event or circumstance. The idea is to create in their minds a mental image of what the future will or could be like. This can only be done by providing them with sufficient data, facts or knowledge. Once they have a clear vision of what the outcome is likely to be, they can choose whether or not to be motivated to accept or support change willingly.

Motivation is often mistaken to be something that has to come from an outside source. But external motivation is not such a strong force and is not of a lasting nature. As long as the source is there, you feel motivated. The moment the source is removed, your motivation thins out and disappears. You then go back to being the same person as before you got motivated. External motivation can inspire you and incite you to act but it cannot act on your behalf. Only you can prompt yourself to act on something. You have to do it on your own. Effective motivation ultimately has to come from inside of you. Where there is no self-motivation, things cannot get moving. Even if they get moving, the motivation won’t last.

No amount of motivation can help solve your problems if you believe your problems are caused by someone or something outside of yourself. You will always look outside for the solution. The emphasis here is that it is not the external event or circumstance that causes you problems but the way in which your personal characteristics and attributes influence your reaction to it. You have to look at yourself again and understand how you interpret what goes on around you. Your outer world is a mere reflection of your inner world.

If you are motivated internally, you feel good about yourself. To have such good feeling does not bring the change or get the things you desire. You have to be genuinely motivated to work on effecting the change or obtaining the desired things. It’s pretty fallacious to think that all a person needs is a little motivation to do or get something. Motivation itself however much never changes anything let alone having a little motivation.

To motivate others, you have to be motivated yourself. If you do not demonstrate a total commitment to or show real enthusiasm for, say, increasing productivity, others are very unlikely to follow. Provide rewards either individually or collectively but it has to be done fairly so that no resentment arises to adversely affect motivation. Giving personal recognition for good work done is very motivating. A boss’s failure to show appreciation for his employees' efforts invariably causes dissatisfaction and low motivation.

You can motivate others to believe in themselves that they have not done so up to now. One effective way is to change their low or negative expectations to positive expectations and to raise them to a higher level so that they feel more hopeful. High expectation is itself a strong motivation. Once it has become their strong beliefs that things will happen or be the case as they desire, they are likely to live their lives and do whatever they want to do with confidence and optimism.

One of the great motivators is enthusiasm. When you are particularly enthusiastic about doing something, nothing and no one has to motivate you. You feel a genuine willingness to do it and in the process derive real enjoyment. There is no deadline to meet, no emolument to look forward to, and no award to win. It is typical of everyone when they are engrossed in something they have great passion for, they are inclined to remain motivated, and nothing can distract them.

It’s always taking the first step toward doing something that is the most difficult. It happens to be the most important part of the journey to getting what you want. Once you get started, you begin to develop confidence and to see progress. Steady progress motivates you to take the next step and thence proceed smoothly and quickly especially when you have more reasons for wanting to accomplish all that you set out to do. Having more reasons for desiring to have something means you are more motivated.

You seek help from self-help books, motivational tapes, audio programs and seminars that supposedly bring definite self-improvement and dramatic changes in your lives. You go through them completely and develop high motivation but alas only for a short while, after which you revert to your former self. You are unable to sustain your motivation for the simple reason that these aids do not teach you how to keep your improvement and motivation going over time. They are external sources of help that can’t really motivate you. They can only help you to motivate yourself, and make you believe you can.

Lasting motivation takes more than reading a book, listening to a tape or attending a seminar. It is quite impossible for a brief spell of motivation learning such as these to effect permanent transformation of your own self. As long as you are engaged in any of these motivational activities, your motivation remains high. The moment you disengage yourself from them, you cease to remain motivated, and you slip under the influence of your previous conditioning. Motivation – strong motivation – has to come from within you.

Whoever you are or whatever you do, you need motivation every moment of your life. Your level of motivation determines the level of your performance. Problem arises when you rely on an outside source to help you motivate yourself when you should be self-motivated. Not surprisingly, people who are successful at whatever they do generate the necessary motivation from the inside.